


Reynsla

by absolutelyCancerous (cal1brations)



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Gen, Languages and Linguistics, because Iceland is a cute little doofus, it's kind of just a character study, sort of headcanon I guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-06
Updated: 2014-03-06
Packaged: 2018-01-14 20:32:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1278016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cal1brations/pseuds/absolutelyCancerous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>prac·tice:</p><p>1. repeated exercise in or performance of an activity or skill so as to acquire or maintain proficiency in it.</p><p>Iceland practices English like it were the secret to eternal youth (something nations don’t even have to concern themselves with), like it’s the most important thing he could ever know, aside from knowing how to breathe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reynsla

**Author's Note:**

> I was listening to a guy talk about Nordic countries and how they all sound speaking in English (literal words: "They all sound ugly when speaking English"). And then I remembered that Iceland tends to feel uncomfortable with his thick accent and hard to understand language, and my head was like "write this" and my hands were like "well alright dude" and here we are.

Iceland practices English like it were the secret to eternal youth (something nations don’t even have to concern themselves with), like it’s the most important thing he could ever know, aside from knowing how to breathe. He’ll practice difficult words, like “exemption” and “tumultuous” and other words that sound like a cacophony of syllables, until they don’t even sound like words anymore, until he confuses the end of the word with the beginning of it from repeating it over and over and over, memorizing how it tastes on his tongue, how it works out of his throat.

He practices from people, not from his people, not from anyone but the people that speak English, and often, _only_ English. This is because he doesn’t want to learn any other horrific accent than the one he’s already stuck with; he doesn’t need to mix up which words to stress (which he already does) in a sentence like Turkey does, and he grimaces at how Denmark’s English sounds like he’s swallowing any open vowels, like _ah_ and _ou_ and other sounds that aren’t meant to be treated with Danish influx.

Iceland’s accent is atrocious-- see, he can _spell_ that word, but he can’t exactly say it, he always mixes up the soft “c” sounds and the ones that are more hard, and those he mixes up in and of themselves! He knows he can be hard to understand because his language, although it is a Nordic language, which often get lumped together into the languages-that-English-is-somewhat-more-related-to-than-others category, is very different in the way the sounds work, the way tone works. When he speaks in English, sometimes people are still waiting for him to talk, even when he’s finished, because of the way his voice sounds in speaking, influxes and pauses at the wrong times.

Iceland does not like to be misunderstood.

He’s independent, he’s an **adult** , and he doesn’t like when he can’t be understood because of something as silly as accent. He feels it’s a stupid, minute thing that shouldn’t bother him as much as it does, but it does, so he practices “practice” and repeats “repeat” until his tongue gets tired from such foreign movements and his head doesn’t know whether to think in Icelandic or English.

He thinks, one morning as he’s buttoning up his shirt in front of the mirror, mumbling  a mantra of “volcano, vol _ka_ no” under his breath no less than eighty times, that perhaps English was only invented to make other countries suffer; everyone has some kind of accent. Russia keeps the words rolling in his mouth, so they come out as vowel-filled purrs, like “ _com_ rade” instead of what it sounds like on America’s tongue, “ _kahm_ rad.” Both of them are right, but, in front of the world (the world that seems to speak only English), America’s version is the one that would be correct.

Of course, the more difficult way to say it. Of course.

But Iceland tries to memorize how they say their words. Notices that, even when English uses words from other languages, they’re sometimes said differently; he only tries to memorize the _English_ way of saying the word, in those cases. Doesn’t want to struggle with other accents or tones or whatever else, only wants to say “quid pro quo” in a way that doesn’t sound like total gibberish.

\---

Iceland does not ever speak Icelandic when he is with anyone that isn’t one of the Nordics; and even then, he limits himself and opts to speak something else. Danish or Norwegian, predominantly. Rarely ever English, which is a little bit of a relief, because while they all know it, they can all get a bit (usually completely) impossible to understand once they get talking quickly or heatedly (or drunk).

Denmark laughs about it, just a little. Says he really _must_ be a King, when he can get all his brothers-- Iceland rolls his eyes very hard at that term-- to speak to him in his own tongue! And, yes, they might be speaking Danish at that time, but they still all have accents. Perhaps Iceland is more harsh about it than any of the others are, because he can recognize when Norway is talking and misplaces his own word for a Danish one, or when Sweden is speaking (grumbling and humming, more like) and might round a vowel in a word to something more akin to his own language. No one else seems to catch these things, or, if they do, no one else really cares. Not on the level Iceland does.

He remembers learning Danish with a bit of the same perfectionism he tries to apply to knowing English. He remembers Denmark laughing at how he would get so caught up in pronunciation, he wouldn’t even finish what he was saying, only stutter over the single word a few hundred times before Denmark would finally supply it with a smirk. And then he’d practice a few more hundred times, the correct way, and have Denmark laughing and laughing about what a devoted little brother he had!

Even now that he knows Danish through and through, he makes sure to say things exactly as he remembers Denmark teaching them to him. Open mouthed sounds, words that come off the tongue like mouthfuls of smoke from the mouth, wide open and languid. Danish is a nice language, even though Norway thinks it’s very nonsensical, perfect for the babbling Denmark likes to do on a near-constant basis. Iceland thinks it’s just easy, not nearly as difficult for others as Icelandic seems to be.

Sometimes, when he can’t remember the word he wants to use in Danish or otherwise, he fights himself not to supply it in Icelandic, simply because he’d rather have to say, “it’s like…” and have someone supply the word for him, instead of him saying something like, oh, “ _hagkerfi_ ”, and have his audience of whoever give him confused stares, and sometimes a couple of “bless you?”s. (He’s gotten plenty of “bless yous” when he mentions some of the names of his cities and the like; he is now extremely wary of how his _actual_ sneezes sound.)

However, Iceland knows that there are some things he can’t totally control, like his thick accent, even if he practices as hard as he does. This does not derail him (de _rail_ , a hard “r”!) from his near-masochistic repetition patterns and rehearsals of things he wants to say, even though about eighty percent of the time, he does not end up speaking more than twenty words in a meeting. He’s not _shy_ , like Denmark accuses him of being, he just gets uncomfortable when he sees the look of confusion on other nation’s faces, specifically ones that speak mainly English, frowning and trying to contemplate that Iceland has not said anything with an “s” in it, he’s said the word “volcano” and, because of how his normally says “c” sounds, it just sounds like that.

However, Norway tells him, in that weird, off-norm tone that Iceland really ought to speak up more; he’s got important things to say when he isn’t pouting and sulking (which Iceland vehemently denies), and his English is far better than his own, or Denmark’s. Of course, Norway does that stupid thing where he pats Iceland’s shoulder, like he’s still a little boy, and Iceland brushes off the compliment by turning up his nose and, in scathing (pouting) Norwegian, alerting Norway that _he is not a child_ , thank you!

But Norway shrugs, hardly affected by the protest. Tells his dearest, most _darling_ little brother to be good while he takes his leave, ignorant of the pouting, tantrum-esque Norwegian that Iceland spouts at his turned back.

However, once he’s alone again, playing with the rim on his styrofoam cup of coffee, packed with so, so much cream that it’s probably more milk than coffee, Iceland finds himself reading over his notes that he probably won’t be sharing, repeating English words like “government” and “ratify” to himself, over and over, until he can hear other nations coming back from the break, chattering amongst themselves in mostly anything but English.

Iceland sighs when the meeting is brought back into swing, this, of course, announced in English. When asked for a new topic of business, and when no one raises their hand for several moments, Iceland forces himself to sit forward.

“Well,” he starts, and kind of wants to smile at how great that “w” came out of his mouth, all hard and not gentle, not Icelandic at all, “as of late, in my country…”

(He tries to keep it brief and speak much slower than he would in Icelandic or Danish when, only a few minutes in, some of the nations are mouthing to one another about just what Höfuðborgarsvæðið is, exactly-- like a city or just a kind of place or something?)

**Author's Note:**

> this was also an excuse to try my hand at writing about language via description and not just slapping foreign words in English texts so if anything it was fun.
> 
> "Reynsla" is Icelandic for "practice" or "experience" as far as I can understand.


End file.
